The Trump administration offers the country and world a daily display of a two-year old child’s innate disdain for the rules, the structure that most of us eventually subscribe to in order to join the human race. The most recent example is the rushed effort to repeal Obamacare, an effort which even by-passed the standard-operation-procedure of running the matter through the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The function of this office is to provide some estimate of the eventual cost of any government proposal. (See link to new story at conclusion.)

But Trump’s band of recalcitrant two-year old children did not want to take the chance that this CBO might slow things down and also might produce a price-tag for this Obamacare repeal that would be problematic. So, like anyone whose two-year old soul is still predominating, they trotted out a self-serving explanation of why they bypassed this procedure and denigrated the integrity of the CBO. Anyone that might disagree with Trump and his minions will immediately be invalidated in some fashion, the most obvious example being his penchant to label as “fake news” any media outlet that dares to criticize him.

But the issue I wish to address here is not Obamacare, or even Trump in a sense, or politics. The issue that Trump has put on the table for my country is the nature of reality itself. Oh, I certainly have no illusions that reality is cut-and-dried. It is, as Norman O. Brown once described it, “A veil we have spun to hide us from the void.” But I believe very strongly in the very limited world we are left with by this “spinning” of Brown’s veil. As T. S. Eliot argued so brilliantly in The Four Quartets, this paltry, broken, confusing, conflicted world of limits is, in a very real sense, the only world that there is. Yes, Eliot recognized as I do that there is a larger, more comprehensive “world” that needs to be addressed through religion, art, and music but we then have to realize there is this “mundane” world that we must take very seriously. And, therefore, there has to be some agreed upon standards without which the very fabric of our being is in jeopardy. Trump with his penchant, even intoxication with deceit and fraud is threatening this fabric. Of course, the CBO is not perfectly “non-partisan” as it is described as it is unfortunately comprised of mere humans. But, Trump and his ilk are demonstrating that they fail to realize they suffer from the same malady of being “human” and are not “non-partisan” themselves.

Here is where I go “woo-woo” on you! Speaking from a philosophical and clinical perspective, Trump is so wounded that he perceives himself as something beyond “human.” His grandiosity is so fierce that he does not think that limits should apply to him as demonstrated so graphically and offensively for decades, and even more so since he declared he was running for the Presidency. Trump has what I call a “god-complex” and is behaving as if he is a god; for, a “god” knows no limits. But a deity of this sort is intrinsically evil, a morass of demonic energy, a black hole who seeks only to destroy, not to affirm life. A dark deity like Trump does not promote unity, the betterment of all, but instead the “betterment” of himself; and his appeal is to those who want only the “betterment” of themselves. These people are power hungry just as is Trump and have sold their soul in a desperate effort to turn back the clock, to “Make America Great Again” and secure wealth and advantage for the few against the many.

And many evangelical Christians have “drank the kool-aid” and revealed the existential insecurity that their immature faith has not been allowed to address. They too have opted for power and control, the antithesis of what Christ taught, and in so doing are making a blasphemy of their faith regardless of how noble they feel their intent is. I do not doubt that they are “Christian” but I do doubt that they have allowed their faith to become dynamic, to become other than the,”letter of the law,” and allow the Spirit of God to cut into the depths of their being where there She can there be “discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

ADDENDUM: Here is an excerpt from the Eliot poem in which he describes reality as a “dance” and beautifully insists “there is only the dance.”At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

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About literarylew

I am a retired mental health counselor in El Prado, NM near Taos.I have a lovely wife, Claire, and our only children are two lovely dachshunds, Elsa and Ludwig. I have a BA in history/psychology (double major) from Henderson State University and a M. Ed. in counseling from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. I have a passion for literature, religion, philosophy....and, in general, the liberal arts.